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10.30. Utilities: Your Mac OS X Toolbox
The Utilities folder (inside your Applications folder) is home to another batch of freebies:
another couple of dozen tools for monitoring, tuning, tweaking, and troubleshooting your
Mac.
The truth is, you're likely to use only about six of these utilities. The rest are very
specialized gizmos primarily of interest to network administrators or Unix geeks who are
obsessed with knowing what kind of computer-code gibberish is going on behind the
scenes.
Tip: Even so, Apple obviously noticed that as the sophistication of Mac OS X fans
grows, more people open the Utilities folder more often. That's why there's a menu
command and a keystroke that can take you there. In the Finder, choose Go Utilities
(Shift- -U).
10.30.1. Activity Monitor
Activity Monitor is designed to let the technologically savvy Mac fan see how much of
the Mac's available power is being tapped at any given moment.
10.30.1.1. The Processes table
Even when you're only running a program or two on your Mac, dozens of computational
tasks (processes) are going on in the background. The top half of the dialog box, which
looks like a table, shows you all the different processes—visible and invisible—that your
Mac is handling at the moment.
Check out how many items appear in the Process list, even when you're just staring at the
desktop. It's awesome to see just how busy your Mac is! Some are easily recognizable
programs (such as Finder), while others are background system-level operations you
don't normally see. For each item, you can see the percentage of CPU being used, who's
using it (either your account name, someone else's, or root, meaning the Mac itself), and
how much memory it's using.
Or use the pop-up menu above the list to see:
• All Processes. This is the complete list of running processes; you'll notice that the
vast majority are little Unix applications you never even knew you had.

• My Processes. This list shows only the programs that pertain to your world—your
login. There are still plenty of unfamiliar items, but they're all running to serve
your account.
• Windowed Process. Now this is probably what you were expecting: a list of actual
programs with actual English names, like Activity Monitor, Finder, Safari, and
Mail. These are the only ones running in actual windows, the only ones that are
visible, which is what most people probably think of as programs.
10.30.1.2. The System monitor tabs
At the bottom of Activity Monitor, you're offered five tabs that reveal intimate details
about your Mac and its behind-the-scenes efforts (Figure 10-27):
• CPU. As you go about your usual Mac business, opening a few programs,
dragging a playing QuickTime movie across the screen, playing a game, and so
on, you can see the CPU graph rise and fall, depending on how busy you're
keeping the CPU. On multiple-processor Macs, you see a different bar for each
chip, enabling you to see how efficiently Mac OS X is distributing the work
among them.
Tip: You may also want to watch this graph right in your Dock (choose View
Dock Icon ShowCPUHistory) or in a bar at the edge of your screen (choose
Window Floating CPU Window Horizontally).Finally, there's the weirdly
uncapitalized command View "Show CPU monitors on top of other
windows." It makes the little bar float on top of all your other programs, so you
can't miss it.
• System Memory. Here's a colorful graph that reveals the state of your Mac's RAM
at the moment.
The number below the graph shows how much memory is installed in your Mac.
If, when your Mac is running a typical complement of programs, the Wired
number plus the Active number nearly equals your total RAM amount, it's time to
consider buying more memory. You're suffocating your Mac.

• Disk Activity. Even when you're not opening or saving a file, your Mac's hard
drive is frequently hard at work, shuffling chunks of program code into and out of
memory, for example. Here's where the savvy technician can see exactly how
frantic the disk is at the moment.
• Disk Usage. This little graph offers one of the quickest ways to check out how full
your hard drive is at the moment. (If you have more than one drive—say, a flash
drive, tape-backup drive, or whatever—choose another drive's name from the pop-
up menu.)
• Network. Keep an eye on how much data is shooting across your office network
with this handy EKG-ish graph.
Figure 10-27. The many faces of Activity Monitor.
Top: It can be a graph of your processor (CPU) activity, your RAM usage at the
moment, your disk capacity, and so on. For most people, only the processes listed
here with tiny icons beside their names are actual windowed programs—those with
icons in the Finder, the ones you actually interact with.
Don't miss the top-left Quit button. It's a convenient way to jettison a locked-up
program when all else fails.
Bottom: If you doubleclick a process's name, you get a three-tab dialog box that
offers stunningly complete reams of data (mostly of interest only to programmers)
about what that program is up to. (The Open Files and Ports tab, for example,
shows you how many files that program has opened, often invisibly.)
10.30.2. AirPort Utility
You use the AirPort Utility to set up and manage AirPort base stations (Apple's line of
wireless Wi-Fi networking routers).
If you click Continue, it presents a series of screens, posing one question at a time: what
you want to name the network, what password you want for it, and so on. Once you've
followed the steps and answered the questions, your AirPort hardware will be properly
configured and ready to use.
10.30.3. Audio MIDI Setup
Maybe you've heard that Mac OS X comes with spectacular internal wiring for music,
sound, and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a standard "language" for inter-

synthesizer communication). It's available, that is, to music software companies who
have written their wares to capitalize on these tools.
This configuration program offers two tabs. The first, Audio Devices, is the master
control panel for all your various sound inputs and outputs: microphones, line inputs,
external speakers, and so on. For most people, this is meaningless, because most Macs
have only one input (the microphone) and one output (the speakers). But if you're sitting
in your darkened music studio, which is humming with high-tech audio gear whose
software has been designed to work with this little program, you'll smile when you see
this tab.
These condtab, MIDIDevices, should look familiar to synthesizer fans who have used
software like OMS or FreeMIDI to teach the Mac about their studio configurations. By
clicking Add Device, you create a new icon that represents one of your pieces of gear.
Double-click the icon to specify its make and model. Finally, by dragging lines from the
"in" and "out" arrows, you teach your Mac and its MIDI software how the various
components are wired together.
10.30.4. Bluetooth File Exchange
One of the luxuries of using a Mac that has Bluetooth is the ability to shoot files (to
colleagues who own similarly clever gadgets) through the air, up to 30 feet away.
Bluetooth File Exchange makes it possible, as described on Section 6.2.5.
10.30.5. Boot Camp Assistant
On Macs with Intel inside, this program helps you create (or destroy) a partition of your
hard drive to hold a copy of Microsoft Windows. Details in Chapter 8.
10.30.6. ColorSync Utility
If you use ColorSync (because you're in the high-end color printing business, for
instance), you might be surprised to find that the ColorSync pane is gone from the
System Preferences program. Instead, that pane's settings have been merged into this
beefed-up program.
This bet-you'll-never-touch-it utility combines two functions:
• Its Profile First Aid tab performs a fairly esoteric task: repairing ColorSync
profiles that may be "broken" because they don't strictly conform to the ICC
profile specifications. (ICC [International Color Consortium] profiles are part of
Apple's ColorSync color management system, as described on Section 7.5.1.3.) If

a profile for your specific monitor or printer doesn't appear in the Profiles tab of
this program when it should, Profile First Aid is the tool you need to fix it.
• The Profiles tab lets you review all the ColorSync profiles installed on your
system. The area on the right side of the window displays information about each
ColorSync profile you select from the list on the left.
The other tabs are described on Section 7.5.1.3.
10.30.7. Console
Console is a viewer for all of Mac OS X's text logs—the behind-the-scenes, internal Unix
status messages being passed between the Mac OS X and other applications.
Opening the Console log is a bit like stepping into an operating room during a complex
surgery: You're exposed to stuff the average person just isn't supposed to see. (Typical
Console entries: "kCGErrorCannotComplete" or "do Get Display Transfer By Table.")
You can adjust the font and word wrapping using Console's Font menu, but the truth is
that the phrase "CGXGet Window Type: Invalid window–1" looks ugly in just about any
font!
Console isn't useless, however. These messages can be of significant value to
programmers who are debugging software or troubleshooting a messy problem, or,
occasionally, to someone you've called for tech support.
10.30.8. DigitalColor Meter
DigitalColor Meter can grab the exact color value of any pixel on your screen, which can
be helpful when matching colors in Web page construction or other design work. After
launching the DigitalColor Meter, just point anywhere on your screen. A magnified view
appears in the meter window, and the RGB (red-green-blue) color value of the pixels
appears in the meter window. You can display the color values as RGB percentages or
actual values, in Hex form (which is how colors are defined in HTML; white is
represented as #FFFFFF, for example), and in several other formats.
Here are some tips for using the DigitalColor Meter to capture color information from
your screen:
• To home in on the exact pixel (and color) you want to measure, drag the Aperture
Size slider to the smallest size—one pixel. Then use the arrow keys to move the
aperture to the precise location you want.
• PressShift- -C (Color Copy Coloras Text) to puton the Clip board the
numeric value of the color you're pointing to.

• Press Shift- -H (Color Hold Color) to "freeze" the color meter on the color
you're pointing to—a handy stunt when you're comparing two colors onscreen.
You can point to one color, hold it using Shift- -H, and then move your mouse
to the second color. Pressing Shift- -H again releases the hold on the color.
• When the Aperture Size slider is set to view more than one pixel, Digital Color
Meter measures the average value of the pixels being examined.
10.30.9. Directory
Directory is, at its heart, a glorified address book that lets you see and organize lists of
people, groups of people, meeting rooms, and equipment (like projectors or TV carts).
This utility is geared toward corporate worker bees who are overseen by a system-
administrator king bee—one who's equipped the office with a Mac OS X Server.
(Without Mac OS X Server and instructions from a network geek, Directory isn't
especially useful.)
10.30.10. Directory Utility
Here's another little program that's not intended for use by ordinary humans. It's
exclusively for corporate network administrators. (And it replaces the NetInfo program
that came with Mac OS X through version 10.4.)
This utility controls the access that each individual Mac on a network has to Mac OS X's
directory services—special databases that store information about users and servers.
Directory Access also governs access to LDAP directories (Internet- or intranetbased
"white pages" for Internet addresses).
A network administrator can use Directory Access to do things like select NetInfo
domains, set up search policies, and define attribute mappings. If those terms don't mean
anything to you, just pretend you never read this paragraph and get on with your life.
10.30.11. Disk Utility
This important program serves two key functions:
• It serves as Mac OS X's own little Norton Utilities: a powerful hard drive
administration tool that lets you repair, erase, format, and partition disks. In
everyday life, you'll probably use Disk Utility most often for its Repair
Permissions feature, which solves an uncanny number of weird little Mac OS X

glitches. But it's also worth keeping in mind, in case you ever find yourself facing
a serious disk problem.
• Disk Utility also creates and manages disk images, electronic versions of disks or
folders that you can exchange electronically with other people.
The following discussion tackles the program's two personalities one at a time.
10.30.11.1. Disk Utility, the hard drive–repair program
Here are some of the tasks you can perform with this half of Disk Utility:
• Repair folders, files, and program that don't work because you supposedly don't
have sufficient "access privileges." This is by far the most common use of Disk
Utility, not to mention the most reliable and satisfying. Using the Repair Disk
Permissions button fixes an astonishing range of bizarre Mac OS X problems,
from programs that won't open to menulets that freeze up the works.
• Get size and type information about any disks attached to your Mac.
• Fix disks that won't appear on your desktop or behave properly.
• Completely erase disks—including rewritable CDs and DVDs (such as CD-RW
and DVD-RW discs).
• Partition a disk into multiple volumes (that is, subdivide a drive so that its
segments appear on the desktop with separate disk icons).
Tip: In Leopard, for the first time in Mac history, Disk Utility can create or
enlarge disk partitions without requiring you to erase the entire hard drive. Details
below.
• Set up a RAID array (a cluster of separate disks that acts as a single volume).
Note: Disk Utility can perform some of its magic on the startup disk—the disk that's
running Mac OS X at the moment. For example, it can check the disk for damage, fix the
permissions of the disk, or even adjust its partitions.But any other operation, like
reformatting, erasing, or actually repairing the disk, still requires the Mac to start up from
a different disk (your Leopard DVD, for example). Otherwise, it'd be like a surgeon
performing an appendectomy on himself—not a great idea.

The left Disk Utility panel lists your hard drive and any other disks in or attached to your
Mac at the moment. When you click the name of your hard drive's mechanism, like "74.5
GB Hitachi iC25N0…" (not the "Macintosh HD" partition label below it), you see a
panel with five tabs, one for each of the main Disk Utility functions:
• First Aid. This is the disk-repair part of Disk Utility, and it does a terrific job at
fixing many disk problems. When you're troubleshooting, Disk Utility should
always be your first resort.
To use it, click the icon of a disk and then click either Verify Disk (to get a report
on the disk's health) or Repair Disk (which fixes whatever problems the program
finds). In other words, First Aid attempts to perform the same healing effects on a
sick hard drive as, say, a program like Norton Utilities.
If Disk First Aid reports that it's unable to fix the problem, then it's time to invest
in a program like DiskWarrior (www.alsoft.com).
Tip: If Disk Utility finds nothing wrong with a disk, it reports, "The volume
appears to be OK." Don't be alarmed at the not-so-congratulatory wording of that
message—that's the strongest vote of confidence Disk Utility can give.
You may wind up using the Verify and Repair Disk Permissions buttons even
more often. Their function is to straighten out problems with the invisible Unix
file permissions that keep you from moving, changing, or deleting files or folders.
(The occasional software installer cancreate problems like this.) You'd be
surprised how often running one of these permission checks solves little Mac OS
X glitches.
Chapter 12 has a much more detailed discussion of permissions.
• Erase. Select a disk, choose a format (always Mac OS Extended [Journaled],
unless you're formatting a disk for use on a Windows machine or an ancient Mac
running Mac OS 8.1 or earlier), give it a name, and click Erase to wipe a disk
clean.
• Partition. With the Partition tools, you can erase a hard drive in such a way that
you subdivide its surface. Each chunk is represented on your screen by another
hard drive icon (Figure 10-28).

There are some very good reasons not to partition a drive these days: A partitioned
hard drive is more difficult to resurrect after a serious crash, requires more
navigation when you want to open a particular file, and offers no speed or safety
benefits.
Figure 10-28. Partitioning your drive with Disk Utility no longer involves
erasing it completely. Select the drive you want to partition from the list on
the left, and click the Partition tab. Click the + button for each new partition
you want.
Now drag the horizontal dividers in the Volumes map to specify the relative
sizes of the partitions you want to create. Assign a name and format for each
partition in the Volume Information area, and then click Apply.
On the other hand, there's one very good reason to do it: Partitioning is the only
way to use Boot Camp, described as Chapter 8. Your Mac is a Mac when running
off of the first partition, and a Windows PC when starting up from the second one.
• RAID. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, and refers to a
special formatting scheme in which a group of separate disks are configured to
work together as one very large, very fast drive. In a RAID array, multiple disks
share the job of storing data—a setup that can improve speed and reliability.
Most Mac users don't use or set up RAID arrays, probably because most Mac
users only have one hard drive (and Disk Utility can't make your startup disk part
of a RAID array).
If you're using multiple external hard disks, though, you can use Apple RAID to
merge them into one giant disk. Just drag the icons of the relevant disks (or disk
partitions) from the left-side list of disks into the main list (where it says, "Drag
disks or volumes here to add to set"). Use the RAID Type pop-up menu to specify
the RAID format you want to use (Stripe is a popular choice for maximizing disk
speed), name your new mega-disk, and then click Create. The result is a single
"disk" icon on your desktop that actually represents the combined capacity of all
the RAID disks.
• Restore. This tab lets you make a perfect copy of a disk or a disk image, much like
the popular shareware programs Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper. You
might find this useful when, for example, you want to make an exact copy of your
old Mac's drive on your new one. You can't do that just by copying your old files
and folders manually. If you try, you won't get the thousands of invisible files that

make up Mac OS X. If you use the Restore function, they'll come along for the
ride.
POWER USERS' CLINIC
Partition Adjustments on the Fly
In Leopard, for the first time, you can expand, shrink, or create partitions
without having to erase the whole hard drive. If you're into partitioning at all,
this is a huge convenience.
Expanding a partition. Suppose, for example, that your main hard drive has two
partitions: a main one (200 gigs) and a secondary one (50 gigs) that used to hold
all your photos and movies. But you've outgrown the second partition, and have
moved all those photos and movies to their own external hard drive. Wouldn't it
be nice to add the newly unoccupied 50 gigs to your main partition?
You can do that without having to erase the whole hard drive. (This process,
however, nukes everything on the second partition, so make sure you're
prepared to lose it all.)
Open Disk Utility. Click the name of the hard drive (for example, "Hitachi
HTS541616J9SA00"—not "Macintosh HD"). Click Partition. You see a display
like the one in Figure 10-28.
Click the second partition (or third, or whatever partition is just after the one
you want to expand) and then click the–button below the list. Poof! It's gone.
Now you can drag the main partition's bottom edge downward (or type a new
size into the Size box), expanding it into the free area. Take a deep breath, and
then click Apply.
Shrinking a partition. In Figure 10-28, you can see that a portion of the first
partition is lightly shaded. (It's blue in real life.) The blue represents data; you
can't shrink a partition so much that it crowds out your files. You can, however,
shrink the partition to eliminate empty space. Just drag the lower edge of its
map chunk upward.
Creating new partitions. Any time there's leftover space on the drive, you can
create new partitions from it.
To do that, click the + button, and proceed as described in Figure 10-28.
•

• Start by dragging the disk or disk image you want to copy from into the Source
box. Then drag the icon of the disk you want to copy to into the Destination box.
•
• Tip: If you want to copy an online disk image onto one of your disks, you don't
have to download it first. Just type its Web address into the Source field. You
might find this trick convenient if you keep disk images on your iDisk, for
example.
•
• If you turn on Erase Destination, Disk Utility obliterates all the data on your target
disk before copying the data. If you leave this checkbox off, however, Disk Utility
simply copies everything onto your destination, preserving all your old data in the
process. (The Skip Checksum checkbox is available only if you choose to erase
your destination disk. If you're confident that all of the files on the source disk are
100% healthy and whole, turn on this checkbox to save time. Otherwise, leave it
off for extra safety.)
• Finally, click the Restore button. (You might need to type in an administrator
password.) Restoring can take a long time for big disks, so go ahead and make
yourself a cup of coffee while you're waiting.
Tip: Instead of clicking a disk icon and then clicking the appropriate Disk Utility tab, you
can just Controlclick (or right-click) a disk's name and choose Information, First Aid,
Erase, Partition, RAID, or Restore from the shortcut menu.
10.30.11.2. Disk Utility, the disk-image program
The world's largest fan of disk images is Apple itself; the company often releases new
software in disk-image form. A lot of Mac OS X add-on software arrives from your Web
download in disk-image form, too, as shown below.
Disk images are popular for software distribution for a simple reason: Each image file
precisely duplicates the original master disk, complete with all the necessary files in all
the right places. When a software company sends you a disk image, it ensures that you'll
install the software from a disk that exactly matches the master disk.
It's important to understand the difference between a disk-image file and the mounted
disk (the one that appears when you double-click the disk image). If you flip back to
Section 5.12.2 and consult Figure 5-22, this distinction should be clear.